The Golden Girl
by The-Last-Girl-To-Wait
Summary: Maggie Coleman is an almost-ordinary teenager, with good grades and few friends, known to her hometown as Nothing Special. It's only when you look a little closer that you notice the small differences, like the currents of gold in her green eyes and the golden streaks in her red hair. Ordinary life was the only thing Maggie had ever known, and soon, she won't even remember it.
1. A Falling Star

**That **day I left school with a bruised body, a bloody nose and a low self esteem - again. This day was hardly any different to the rest - I went to school, I underwent my daily beating and I went home - only, it _was_ different. Not physically, but still _different_. I could feel it like an itch that had been slowly forming in the centre of your back and you can't quite get to it. I felt like I was being watched, and I was curious to know why. I wanted to scratch the itch until it was raw and sensitive. But it was probably nothing, just my paranoia again. Just inside my head, nothing more, nothing less, because why would someone be watching me, of all people? Even so, I kept my guard up, better safe than sorry.

Unlilke my usual routine, instead of walking straight home I walked to the tattoo parlour, _DunksDesigns_, across town. The parlour sat on the corner of the road leading out of town, in a run down neighbourhood, and the bright aqua-blue building stood like a clown at a funeral. The sign on the door said it was closed, but judging by the light from the back room, it seemed someone was home.

The door swung open at my touch with a small squeak, and I was welcomed with a blast of warm air. "Hello?" I called, and a heavy, average height man with peircings and sleeve tattoos came into the from room of the shop wiping his face with a towel.

"Look, I'm sorry for any inconviences, but the sign says we're closed." He said without looking up.

"Closed even for a sister?" I say, then realising who he was talking to, he took the towel from his face and smiled, then wrapped his gigantic arms around my shoulders. I wasn't actually his sister, I just liked to pretend because I had no known biological family other than the aunt I lived with, and something told me, he liked to pretend too.

He let me go and took a step back to look at me. "You look like shit." He said.

"Full of compliments as always, I see." I replied. Dunk was nice. Honest. Bluntly so.

"So what can I do for you?"

"I actually have a new design for you." I take out my old sketch book of tattoo designs that I had drawn for Dunk in the past, my most recent drawing is marked with an old red shoelace. "I was hoping you could tattoo it for me on my left shoulder blade."

"Well, let's take a look, shall we?"

...

My house was in the middle of nowhere, nothing but fields and forests for miles. That was what I loved about it. My aunt was hardly mum ever around, out on "business" she would say. I didn't mind though, because I liked the quietness of being by myself and I was technically old enough to live by myself. It was a small house, nothing much. It had what I needed, so I stayed.

When I arrived back home, there was a note from my aunt on the kitchen counter:

_Maggie,_

_I'm gone out to a meeting with a client from work. I won't be back for a while so you'll have to make your own dinner_. _There are left overs from last nights dinner, if you want to heat it up in the microwave._

_Clair._

Thanks Clair, but no thanks. When Clair says she's gone on a "meeting" it usually means she's gone on a date and won't be back for a while, if you catch my drift. Also, Clair's cooking could be a bit. . . Unreliable, to put it kindly, and besides, I was exhausted from the walk and stiff from healing bruises, so I wasn't going to risk getting sick tonight.

I didn't really care that I got punched and kicked in school. I don't even know why I didn't care. Obviously it was sore, but. . . But. But. But. The big "B" word. _"But" what?_ I thought. _Why do I keep thinking "but"? Do I deserve it? Do I enjoy it? Of course I don't enjoy it. So what is the but?_ That was the thought that was ever present in my head.

_But maybe worse is yet to come..._

_..._

Later that night I made a vegetarian burger - nearly as bad as a real one - and started doing my history homework. I always dreaded history. Not for any particular reason, it just constantly confused me. I could handle the other subjects, like geography or science or maths, but history? I failed nearly every test.

It took me long enough to finish my homework, I cleaned up the plate I used for my dinner and washed the dishes in the sink, then went outside and walked into the nearby forest. It was almost as if time stood still in the forest, like I had stepped into some sort of pocket universe. A big one with a smaller one inside.

I only ever come here at sunset. The fading light tints the grass red and the wood of the trees a brownish-gold, like they were gigantic gold pillars holding up the sky. It had rained earlier that day and the way the water on the leaves caught the light made it look like the forest was on fire! At night though, the moonlight would cast it's light on the leaves and they looked like they were made of silver.

I loved to watch the sun go down. It was always so beautiful. The sky would blaze orange then the sun would disappear and the stars and the moon would come out, and even though the sunset was beautiful it was the stars I really came for.

I keep thinking that if I stare at the stars long enough I'll somehow fly up into them and live far away on a planet that no one knows about. It's crazy and impossible - I know. But I can always dream and hope for the wonderful.

Every night I would look at the sky and there would be one star that would never move. Some nights it wouldn't be there, but mostly it would, just dangling like any other star really. If anyone else looked up at the sky it would look like an ordinary star. But I know what a star looks like, this one was different. It shined brighter and was more blue than the rest.

Sometimes if I really focused, it was almost like it was crying out for help. . . All alone up in that big sky.

My star.

My cold blue star...

Only it wasn't blue. Not anymore. It had started to turn red around the edges and seemed to be getting larger. It got more and more red and larger and larger by the second.

My star was falling.

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- S x


	2. The Blue Box

**I** stared at the sky, completely awestruck. It was falling. Right in front of my eyes. What was it? An asteroid? Whatever it was, it had come so close to the earth that it was nearly the size of the moon. Flames surrounded the edges of it, and the orange fire mingled with the cold blue shine that emanated from my falling star.

It was getting closer. Closer and closer. So close I could hear it falling. I could feel the heat of the flames, and it roared past, somersaulting overhead and continued its decent deeper into my forest.

I _have_ to get closer, I thought.

I stared in the direction it flew, and ran as fast as I could. This was incredible, and no one will ever believe me. Still I ran further and further into my forest, branches and leaves scratching at my face, my arms and my legs, trying to pull me back. Then I heard the crash, a deafening crash, and was knocked down on to my back with a blast of wind, that rushed through the trees overhead and the bushes around me. I stood up slowly and brushed the dirt off. I was dizzy, and had a throb in the back of my head, and I felt a warm trickle on my neck, but I continued towards the crash site.

As I got closer, I noticed a few bushes burning, the tops of trees knocked off, patches of bark that were scorched, and chunks of earth missing from the ground. I also started to hear things, a slow mechanical wheezing and clanging, like pots and pans in a kitchen. Odd combination.

Eventually, I found it. The land was black and each step I took left the would-be grass to ash. Trees had been uprooted, and there was a gigantic hole in the ground. "What the hell..." What was this? I inched closer taking baby steps and peered over the edge of the hole. It was only about three or four feet deep and at the bottom - I wasn't even sure. I leaned in and pressed my palm to it - wood.

_Wood_? _What_? This thing was made of _wood. _How could it be made of wood? I had no idea. But I did know two things - this was _not_ an asteroid and I needed a shovel.

...

I made my way back to the crash site with a shovel and began to dig the dirt away at the closest side, down to the wooden... thing and by the time I had made it that far I was lying on the scorched grass gasping for breath. Shit. How was I going to do this?

...

The days went by and after school I came back here and I kept digging. Sometimes my enormous tabby cat, Benjamin, would follow me and sit on the small mound of dirt behind me and watch as I dug. Eventually I moved another few feet of dirt and had revealed nothing but a bit of panelling. I had found however, that it was painted royal blue. I had a feeling that this information would be _very_ useful in the future.

I kept digging and uncovered more and more, a key hole, and the bottom of a sign - _Pull To Open, _and the logo of _Saint Johns Ambulance. _I think it was fair to deduce that this was a door. And knowing that made me only more eager to see what was inside. But, if this was a door, there must be something inside - right? So I chanced it, and I knocked.

And it knocked back.

And I jumped back.

Most people would have screamed or ran - which would have been more logical - but I stared and sat leaning back on my elbows silently. _What...? Where...? How...? Should I...? Shovel._ I need to get whatever, or _who_ever, is in there out.

Thoughts raced through my mind, _what was this? A spaceship? Is there an alien inside? Where did it come from? Why is it on Earth? I wonder what it looks like. I hope it's not injured. _I stopped digging. _What if it tries to kill me?_

_Pfft! It won't try to kill me, I just saved it! Or - I am saving it. Why would it try to kill me anyway? What did I ever do to it? Nothing, that's what, so it has no reason to kill me._ _Okay, stop thinking it's going to kill you - it's not. Jeez. _

_Yeah. Right. Okay. I wonder how big this thing is. It could be huge... What if I can't dig it out? No. No point thinking like that. You saw the size of it, it went right over your head, it was at least the size of a rubbish skip. I think. But what if they have ray guns? How am I gonna get away then? They'll just vaporise me and I'll be left as a pile of - Maggie! Stop! Just dig! Right. Dig._

_..._

A whole week had gone by since I found the spaceship-thingy, and every evening I came back to it to dig up more of the dirt around it. I had managed to dig away the whole front and half of the left-hand side. I had decided that I had dug away enough of the earth around it. There was enough space around the door to open it wide enough for a grown average man to squeeze through.

"What do you think Benny?" I sat down of the dirt pile next to him and scratched behind his ears and he responded with a loud purr. "You think there's an alien inside? it's a bit of an odd spaceship though - being a wooden box and all. Come on. I wanna try to... talk to it - or something." I picked up Benjamin off my lap and climbed down in to the small gap between the wooden box and the ground, then knocked again.

"Hello? I know there's something in there. Do you speak English?" I felt kinda stupid, talking to a box. After about 10 or 15 seconds and no response I began to climb back you.

"Hello? Hello, is someone out there?" the voice was muffled and hard to make out, but it was definitely a man, human. English.

"Oh my god are you okay? Wait one second," I climbed back up and knelt on the blackened grass "okay you can open the door, I moved enough of the dirt but it'll be a bit of a tight squeeze."

The door opened as wide as it could and the man stuck his head, arm and shoulder out. "Oh." He said as he noticed how tight the squeeze really was. His hair was light brown and he had a floppy fringe that curled to the right. He had light green eyes and wore a stripped shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a red bow tie and braces. He had high cheekbones and a fairly large chin. My first thought was that this guy, was extremely sexy.

"Em... Hello." I said, suddenly feeling very self conscious and awkward.

The man looked up, a little shocked to see me, and smiled, a big goofy grin. "Hello," he said "I'm The Doctor."


End file.
